EMANUEL PALMER
The Garden and How It Grew—
Eden 1881-1981
Compiled by Verna Rae Colvin

Emanuel Palmer was born July 2, 1877, at Bloomington, Bear Lake, Idaho. He was the third child of Isaac Hodgkinson Palmer and Alice Elizabeth Holmes. His early childhood and schooling took place in Idaho; then at the age of fifteen, he drove a team and wagon all the way to Arizona. The Aaron nelson and the Ira Kempton families were also in this company. The journaey started in September 1892 and took eight weeks. Other than watching out for Indians, they had a pleasant trip, singing songs around the campfire at night to ease the worries of the day.

Tents provided their first home in Thatcher. They stayed there only long enough to work to earn food supplies. They went on to Pima and visited relatives there. While in Pima, the family traded a four horse team and wagon for 28 acres of land and then made a trade of this land for 60 acres in Eden.

In Eden, Emanuel worked for William Webb who had a little merchandising business. Mr. Webb had contracts with the U.S. Government to furnish hay, grain and supplies to the soldiers at San Carlos and Ft. Grant. Emanuel had turned seventeen when he took the lonely job of hauling this freight.

He married Mary Sophronia Curtis on August 5, 1896, in Eden, Arizona. Mary Sophronia was the daughter of Moses Curtis and Elizabeth Hanks who were among the first to settle in Curtis-Eden. She was born on September 4, 1878, in Brigham City, Arizona, where her parents had just arrived from Salem, Utah. She was only two years old when her parents moved to the Gila Valley.

Emanuel and Mary Sophronia were the parents of ten children: Carrie Sophronia (Alva Layman Thatcher), Millie Elizabeth (James Walter Chandler), Journal Emanuel (Goldie Holladay), Olive (1. Isaac Hugh Robinson 2. Grover Hoops), Isaac Curtis (died young), Zola Pearl died infant), Drucie - twin (1. Arthur M. Touwnsend 2. Leslie West), Dulcie - twin (died infant), James Gail (1.
Verna Vieregge 2. Rosellen Hampton) and Ellis Lamar (1. Lenore Lee 2. Betty Jean Prince).

In the early 1920's the Palmer family left the Eden homestead and went to Miami for work at the Inspiration Mine and lived there until their home burned, and they lost everything. At that time, they moved to Thatcher, and Emanuel worked for Don Pace for about nine years and then for Weldon and Leslie Maloy at the M & M Hardware Company. The last work that he did was watchinq over the fields and harvesting the cotton crop of Eldon Palmer.

Mary Sophronia died on August 22, 1946, at the old Morris Squib Hospital. Emanuel lived alone in Thatcher until his death on May 2, 1964, in Thatcher at the age of 87 years. They are both buried in the Thatcher Cemetery.